


Here Today

by Lynzee005



Category: McLennon - Fandom, The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dinner Party, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Magical Realism, cottage by the sea, post breakup, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-23 08:13:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20239603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/pseuds/Lynzee005
Summary: **COMPLETE** On a piece of Scottish coastline, overlooking the sea, happiness finally found them. They just have to make it through today.





	1. Heart of the Country

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alltidvinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alltidvinter/gifts).

> Based on this fic prompt from the lovely alltidvinter: "I totally realize that a "proper" (like, realistic and IC) fix-it fiction would take a lot of effort and research, so maybe something small and unassuming? Like, a glimpse of one of those beautiful futures of domesticity (the cottage by the sea, perchance?), however irrealistic it might be? I just feel like I'm in desperate need for some McLennon-happiness!" I went for more than just a glimpse, because I couldn't help myself. I hope you enjoy, dear friend!
> 
> Canon-divergent around late 1977. Entire story takes place on December 8, 1980.

8 December 1980  
Isle of Skye  
4:00pm 

Rain that had been threatening the coastline all from heavy and pendulous storm clouds finally began to _drip drop _on the crunchy gravel of the laneway. Paul cast his eyes up at the slate grey sky overhead and wiped moisture—a mix of sweat and rain—from his forehead with the sleeve of his wool sweater. 

_At least the wind has died down_, he thought to himself. As much as he loved the taste of ocean salt on the gales that blew in from the west, it wreaked havoc with the carefully manicured grounds of his little seaside cottage. Looking around him now, however, he couldn’t see much in the way of debris to pick up; a few twigs and a clumped, leafy branch was all that cluttered the driveway, and he wasn’t worried about the yard. Night was falling; the dinner guests that evening wouldn’t see any of it anyway. 

He leaned the axe against the side of the shed and stacked eight pieces of firewood in his arms as the rain began to pick up, lashing the corrugated tin roof of the small hut he’d built to house the rough-hewn tree stumps that would suffice as winter fuel through the long cold months ahead. He measured the distance between the dry safety of where he stood and the front door to the cottage in sheets of rain and mapped out the quickest path to get there without becoming drenched. He only hoped he’d left the door unlatched. 

Luck was on his side. Ten large steps took him to the outside landing and he barely had to shoulder the free side of the door for it to swing open. He stepped into the small foyer just as another wave of rain swept in from the sea. He could hear it, the gush of water running toward him, louder and louder until it was a crashing _tschhhhhhh_ right overhead. With the toe of his work boot, he nudged the door shut, pushing it closed with his behind. 

_Nick of time_, he thought with a smile. 

The firewood he set down on the bench just inside the door; his boots he took off and set on the newspaper laid out specifically for that purpose. As the rain pounded on the narrow roof overhead, Paul sighed, happy to be safe and warm, bundled up inside instead of stuck out there in the squall. 

He re-stacked the firewood and took the three steps down from the foyer into the little hallway separating the kitchen and dining area on the left from the solarium on the right before marching straight back through to the living area that overlooked the shoreline beyond. There, a fire was already burning low in the corner, warming the entire room, as it had been doing all afternoon; a huge pile of wood already sat on the hearth, more than enough to keep it going for the whole night and into tomorrow. Paul arranged the logs in his arms on the pile, which now reached above his hip, and brushed his hands in front of him, knocking loose the wood chips and dirt accumulated from an afternoon’s worth of outside work. 

He took great pride in the little _ bothy _ on the western edge of the Isle of Skye, a half hour from Portree. It wasn’t huge, about thirteen-hundred square feet on two levels, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two fireplaces—two of just about everything. The sunroom faced north, the garden sat to the south, backing onto a patch of greenspace that stretched all the way down to the rocky beach clinging to the shore of Loch Bracadale. When approaching from the east, on the long driveway that branched off from the main road, the descent into a little vale, between two rolling hills, led you straight to the little cottage, sitting like a gleaming pearl right in the middle of verdant grounds and rocky shores. Paul had been enamoured of it on sight. 

Purchasing it had been the first big thing he’d done following the end of his marriage, and as such he cleaved to it, this newly grown limb. Of all the homes and properties he _could_ live in—the ranch in Arizona, the house in London, apartments in New York and mansions in California, even the Highlands farm that felt like a stone’s throw away from where he stood—_this _was the one he chose to be home. 

And what a funny place it was to call “home”, so different from all the others. You would have to look hard to find evidence of who lived within these walls—a signature in the corner of a painting on that wall, a Grammy on that shelf, a left-handed guitar and an upright grand piano in that corner. There was no room for clutter, old or new. Everything contained in the four walls of this home had a distinct and specified purpose, place, and reason to be there. 

It was a home for new beginnings, and in the nearly three years since he’d lived there, new beginnings were all he’d had. 

And tonight—a simple dinner party—represented another one. 

Paul retraced his steps into the kitchen and adjoining dining room, where dishes of eggplant parmesan and butternut squash and creamed leeks and fresh bread sat simmering and baking and warming in various states of readiness. It was a mess, to be sure, but one’s kitchen ought to be when preparing for a dinner party. He was careful not to disturb any of the foodstuffs, especially in his present state of disarray; but his curiosity won over, and he swiftly peeked at each dish before stepping back and into the dining area, where the long table was set for eight. Each piece of cutlery was readjusted until it was exactly right, with each napkin placed _just-so_, each glass a finger-width from the top of each plate. The small bundle of flowers—Christmas holly and eucalyptus and green winter foliage picked up that morning in town with the rest of their supplies—cast a fragrant shadow over the center of the table, a finishing touch that Paul hadn’t expected to turn out so well. 

The liquor selection was his next stop. A bottle of single malt and a peaty homebrew from a friend in town stood tall behind full bottles of wine on the liquor cart against the wall in the threshold between dining and living room. Empty tumblers and wine glasses gleamed tall and polished in the warm overhead light. He could see nothing to adjust or redo, but redo it he did, repositioning each glass and artfully distributing the bottles so they didn’t appear so _staged_. Sufficiently pleased, Paul ran his fingertip along the polished wood and chrome of the cart’s top and sighed. He checked his watch. _Four-thirty __pm_. Guests were set to arrive at six, which is when he’d put the eggplant parmesan in the oven; then he’d start the leeks, and turn the vegetable stew down to a simmer until it was time to serve. Everything, it seemed, was planned out perfectly. 

All he had to do was shower. 

Still smiling, he ascended the steps to the second floor and into the hallway between the two bedrooms—master on the right; guest, made up with bunk beds for when the kids visited, on the left—and pushed his way into the cloistered darkness of his room. There, he disrobed quietly, carefully—placing all his dirty work clothes directly in the hamper—and made his way into the wood-lined bathroom, where he turned on the shower and let the steam fill the room, warming him up before he stepped under the spray. 

There, he luxuriated in the hot water that fell on his skin while the cold rain thundered on the roof overhead. His mind drifted, away from dinner preparations and outdoor beautification projects and the status of the storm cloud hanging low outside the window. Eyes closed, breathing in the heat, Paul barely moved. 

It was only when he felt the relatively cold air of the bedroom seeping through the cracked in the shower stall door that he came to. He didn’t have to wait long before he was joined; a pair of arms wrapped around his waist, a kiss pressed to the nape of his neck. Paul, eyes still closed, leaned back. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

“You didn’t. Well—I mean, you did. But a while ago. When you came in from outside.” 

Paul sighed and turned around. The shower was steamy, to say the least; even with glasses on, Paul was certain they wouldn’t have been able to see each other much more clearly. Still, he moved slowly, bringing his hand up to cup his partner’s cheek, careful not to startle. 

“You slept the whole afternoon away.” 

“Did I?” 

“Mmm-hmm.” 

Paul felt the energy of the conversation change markedly as the subject—a touchy one, one that had brought with it an argument earlier in the day—was swiftly and decisively changed. “Are you still nervous about tonight?” 

Paul straightened his shoulders. “When did I say I was nervous?” 

“Come on, Macca…”

Paul sighed. “I’m fine, John.” 

“That’s too bad,” John whinged, pulling a pout. “Here I thought I could help relieve your tension…” 

Paul grinned. “Oh, is me bein’ nervous all it takes?” 

John’s eyes flashed devilishly and made a face, screwing up his voice as he was so wont to do. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said, closing the gap between them, his hand on Paul’s hip. 

Paul looked down, watching through the fog of steam as John's thumb traced lazy circles in the rivulets of water that ran down Paul's body. His breath caught in his throat. He thought of the time, of the dishes in the kitchen and guests on their way. But he also thought about John's lips, John's mouth, inches from his own. This close, a new kind of heat began to pool in the capillaries beneath Paul’s skin. He felt himself quiver; curiously, his knees began to itch. He smiled then, leaned in, and kissed John slowly, murmuring through a smile and against the lips pressed to his: “As a matter of fact…” 

They had all the time in the world.


	2. I'm in Love With a Friend of Mine

Paul leaned back into his armchair and sighed. The sun had set some time ago, pitching the entire Inner Hebrides—indeed all of Scotland—in wintertime post-meridiem darkness. But the setting sun had taken the rain clouds away with it, too. Now, the sky had opened up, revealing a firmament filled with stars stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions. On the distant horizon, where the still waters of the loch met the chop of the North Atlantic, Paul could hardly tell where sea ended and sky began.

Inside, the heat of the fire in the living room radiated into the solarium, where he sat, scotch in hand, staring out the window; through the door on his left, all the way on the other side of the house, he could see the flames dancing in the hearth, one of John’s cats curled up on the latch hook rug in front, next to his old girl Martha. He could hear the faint crackle of the wood, the occasional dreaming whimper from the dog—soothing evening sounds coming from the heart of their home.

He smiled and cast his eyes to the ceiling. Faraway in the upper reaches of their small cottage, Paul heard the sounds of John getting ready for that night’s party. The creak of floorboards, the shuttering of closet doors, the faint crackling of John’s bedside radio tuned to the BBC: Paul could follow his movements from bathroom to bedroom and back again in the ten minutes that he sat alone in the chair by the window, since he descended from the steamed heat of their shower, warm and damp and deeply sated… 

It was five-thirty. The ice in Paul’s glass clinked against the side. He lifted his drink to his lips and gulped it down, feeling the warmth in his throat mimic the warmth that still lingered in his skin.

When John finally came down the stairs and made his way into the sun room, Paul smiled. He always cut a fine figure—tonight, slim hips in a pair of dark blue jeans, a white t-shirt, a grey button-up sweater, one Paul had given him for his birthday. Paul, by contrast, felt far too formal, wearing a shirt and tie underneath a pale blue sweater, grey slacks, his hair carefully coiffed, every last bit of which he’d debated over for far longer than he’d cared to remember. He almost hated the fact that it was effortless for John to look this nice when it took so much effort on Paul’s part to feel the same about himself. He suddenly felt self-conscious and, fingering the cuff of his sweater, reopened the debate over whether or not he should take off this extra layer.

When he saw that Paul was fidgeting, John clucked his tongue. “You look nice, Paul,” he said. “Already tipplin’?” he asked.

Paul let his hand drop. “Got into the Macallan,” he said, nodding at the small table beside the other armchair. “Poured on for you, too.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” John replied as he took his seat.

_ His seat _, Paul thought as he looked at John in the armchair across from him. It was part of their routine now, to come in from outside or at the end of a long day and to sit, Paul in this chair and John in that one, to spend the evening hours together. Sometimes they’d sit quietly, a cat in each lap, reading or writing with a window cracked to let the seabreeze in. Sometimes they’d listen to the radio, a small brown Bakelite unit that only picked up AM radio signals and had been left behind by the previous owners. Sometimes Paul would do the crossword. Sometimes John would idly fingerprick his way through his favourite songs, re-interpreting them alongside new, made-up lyrics. It didn’t matter what they did; it was just nice to sit together, and they did it almost every night, without fail. They were such old men, he thought with a smile; old and domesticated. It was such a simple thing, this, something Paul had taken for granted with the women he’d shared a home with before; now, it was something so meaningful it almost defied description. So he and John had never tried. It was enough to sit and be present, feeling how lucky they were to be there together.

_ Two years now _ , Paul thought. _ For two years I’ve been sharing this home with John Lennon. _

It was a dream. Something out of a fairytale.

Of course it had felt like an actual dream when John had shown up, entirely unannounced, on that crisp autumn day in 1978. It hadn’t been planned. There was no premeditation. But Paul’s marriage had buckled and so had John’s, and during a routine phone call one November day, it occurred to both of them that there was no longer any reason _ not to _ anymore. So they didn’t. 

And there hadn’t been any discussion either, at least not that Paul recalled. John’s clothes just suddenly occupied space in Paul’s closets, and his books began populating the shelves. His mail appeared in the letterbox. His body warmed his side of the bed in the room upstairs, in front of the window that looked out over the same loch Paul looked at now. Enough food for two filled the refrigerator and the kitchen cupboards; a larger dining table, the one now set for eight in the dining room, had to be ordered. John’s kids planned visits, sometimes alongside Paul’s own children. They adopted the cats. Soon, the quiet seaside retreat that Paul had literally retreated to filled with life and sounds and warmth that he hadn’t expected to find on a windswept Scottish beach.

All because John Lennon had shown up, finally, and for the first time.

It had been easy. It had been _ so easy _. And no one—not their former wives, not their former bandmates, not the friends and lovers they’d stayed in touch with closely enough to warrant these kinds of revelatory confessions—seemed surprised by it. As Ritchie had said, during the intimate belated 40th birthday ‘do they’d thrown for him on that expansive front lawn that past summer: “It’s about bloody time.”

And it _ was _.

Years of hiding had given way to the most public and bitter divorce. Now that all the dirty laundry was washed and put away again, they had this: the peaceful calm of two chairs in a sunroom on the Isle of Skye. 

It was perfect.

Paul sipped from his glass, his actions mirrored by John.

“What’s for supper?” John asked before interrupting Paul to provide an answer. “Can’t be salad. Salad doesn’t smell this delicious.”

Paul ignored the backhanded compliment about his vegetarianism; he appeased John and his meat-eating most days of the week, so for one day he’d be able to return the favour. “Vegetable stew, eggplant parmesan, your favourite soda bread…”

“Oh, I remember making that,” John teased softly with a grin as he leaned back, eyeing Paul through his wired spectacles. He winked. “Best part of the meal so far.”

It _ was _ his bread recipe, and he _ had _ been the one to make it, but Paul couldn’t let him get away with the zinger. “You’ll be singing a different tune once you’ve had my creamed leeks…”

“Oh I’ve ‘ad yer creamed leaks…” John said, his voice dangerously low as he waggled his eyebrow, making Paul laugh. 

“Yer filth, Lennon.”

He made a face. “You don’t know the half of it”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence then, interrupted only by the soft but relentless tick-tock of the clock in the hallway.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Us,” Paul replied.

John took another sip from his glass and set it down again on the table. “You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

Paul shook his head. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

John shrugged and grinned. “Maybe I’m projectin’.”

“So _ you’re _ nervous?” Paul asked. And suddenly he remembered how John had awoken in a cold sweat in the middle of the night— _ every _ night, at nearly the same time, for the entirety of the last week—and how he hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep, and how the fight that had brewed all morning centered on whether or not John’s nightmare had been about the dinner party.

But John shook his head. “I’m not nervous.”

At the risk of dredging it up again, Paul cleared his throat and pushed, gently. “So what was your nightmare about if not tonight?”

He didn’t expect John to reply; he didn’t want to provoke a fight, either, but he was fairly confident that John would ignore his barbed and pointed question, because that was his way. So the surprise was all Paul’s when John gulped back the rest of his drink and took a breath.

“I had this horrible feeling, Paul. All week long,” John started, trailing off as he shook his head. “Never mind.”

It was the closest thing to a real conversation they’d had in about a week, a fact which now all of a sudden made sense—who wants to have a discussion with “horrible feelings” hanging over head? Paul didn’t want him to stop now. “No, John. Go on. 

John was quiet, not seething, but hesitant to continue speaking, that much was obvious. With his back to the window, John had a view over Paul’s shoulder of the bluff behind the house, the little laneway that led up and back toward the highway and little hamlet of Ullinish. Squinting through his glasses, John seemed to be pretending to see something. Paul could tell he was stalling, but he wasn’t about to goad; this felt too important. 

Finally, John put a hand on his chest. “It felt like… like something awful was going to happen. Like a… oh fuck, like a premonition.”

Paul never went for that spooky spiritual stuff, but he could see that John was plainly rattled by whatever it was he’d experienced. “You had this feeling last night?”

John nodded. “And every night this week.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“It was four in the fuckin’ morning, Paul,” he said. “And I know you don’t believe in all that shit…”

“Well… what did you think was going to happen?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know. I had this vague notion that it was about something big and tragic. Like… an IRA bombing or a plane crash or something like that. Something big.” He trailed off for a moment before meeting Paul’s eyes again. “I felt like I was the only one who knew it was happening, but I was powerless to stop it. Like it was going to happen no matter what anyone did.”

“Like a dream?”

“Maybe.”

“And it’s like that every night?”

John nodded. “It’s been getting _ worse _ every night. Last night was…” he trailed off, rubbing the bridge of his nose and squishing the pad of his thumb into the corner of his right eye. “Always at four am.”

_ No wonder you slept all day… _

“Maybe I ought to brew you some coffee then?”

John smirked. “I’m fine, Macca. It’s just—” he looked up at Paul, held his gaze for a long and tender moment. “You’re okay, right? You haven’t gotten some horrible wasting cancerous disease or somethin’ that you haven’t told me about, have you?”

Paul almost laughed. “John, you know I’d tell you if I did.”

Relief flooded his eyes. “Good,” he whispered. And that was that.

Paul didn’t know what to say. Sentimentality had never been John’s strong suit; he could sing about wanting to hold your hand, but in practice it wasn’t always as clear-cut. For a wordy guy, John was surprisingly mute on the subject of his personal feelings, preferring instead to let his actions speak for him, but the few instances of outright romance that Paul had seen over the years—love letters to Cynthia, flowers sent to well-kept secret affairs, the performative love between him and Yoko—had still been rather few and far between. It wasn’t that Paul doubted his affections; but… 

No, he absolutely had his doubts; not of John’s private feelings but of his public ones. And Paul’s biggest fear—that hosting a small group of friends and neighbours from this part of the island, openly and honestly for the first time in the two years they’d been living together, and that John was not ready at all to take that step and would bail at the last minute—was mere minutes from being realized.

“I _ am _ nervous about tonight,” he admitted finally.

John looked at his watch. “Bit late to cancel, innit?”

Paul nodded. “I suppose,” he said. “But we can always just downplay… I mean, if you don’t want—”

“Paul—”

“No, John, I mean it. I don’t want to pile on, if you’re already not feeling well, or—”

John got up then and crossed the space between their chairs, stepping into the pool of butterscotch light that spilled out from the small desk lamp on the table next to them, and crouched in front of Paul’s chair. “I chose you. I chose this,” he said. “I’m not ashamed of us.”

Paul softened, nodded. “Okay,” he said. 

“I want to shout it from the rooftops, Paul.”

Cracking a smile, Paul nodded again. “Okay,” he said again.

“As a matter of fact, where’d you put that ladder for cleanin’ the eaves?”

John started up, and Paul barked a laugh and grabbed his hand to pull him back down. “Okay, John. Okay. I get it.”

Like an old book, the unpleasantness was shelved away; it was that easy. John, now standing at Paul’s side, leaned down and kissed Paul—softly, with no hesitation in his lips; Paul melted into the cushion—as the sunroom was briefly lit up by the headlights coming down the lane 

John pulled away, stood up to his full height, and stroked the side of Paul’s face; with one swift and deliberate move, he tugged on the knot in Paul’s tie, loosening it and sending it askew, flipping one flap of the shirt collar up and over the collar of the blue sweater. “Yer tie’s a mess, Macca. Fix yerself up, would you?”

Momentarily flustered, Paul moved to fix the tie, but John just laughed as he made his way to the door to greet their guests; Paul grinned and let out a laugh of his own before slipping his index finger into the loosened knot and pulling it off completely, along with the blue sweater. 

John had that way about him, of making decisions come clearly and easily. It was how they’d started their decades long romance all those years ago, with the simple and fateful decision to hold one another’s hand during a moment of insecurity; it was how John had ended up living in the _ bothy _ by the sea; it only made sense that it was how John would make Paul feel more comfortable in his own skin than he’d felt in years.

He hastily folded the sweater and the tie and tucked it away on the small shelf that ran along the outer edge of the sunroom. Voices from outside, laughter, the sound of John opening the door to welcome them all met Paul's ears. He found himself smiling once again, softly this time; this was a smile meant just for himself. Then he sighed and bustled himself into the kitchen to finish supper preparations


	3. I Look Around Me and I See It Isn't So

No one sat at either end of the long and narrow rectangular table, preferring instead to arrange themselves four-to-a-side. John was on one side at one end, with Paul diagonally opposite him at the other. Rounding out their guests were friends and neighbours from the island. Sitting there were the Abernathys—Peter and Phyllis—who lived down the road a bit, their closest neighbours by proximity, who were so free with the bounty of their farm that they’d struck up an instant friendship; there was Thomas, who fished the loch and came ashore from time to time to play with Martha, and his friend, Dolores, whose Struan restaurant Thomas kept well-stocked with cod and mackerel and probably much more besides if their flirtatious banter was anything to be believed; there was the recently-widowed Mary, whose mail and groceries John had been picking up in town on a weekly basis for the six months since her husband died, because she never learned how to drive; and there was Linda, who had left the kids alone for the weekend so she could show her support for the man she’d amicably divorced three years earlier.

Linda’s approval, whether tacitly implied or explicitly stated, was never something that Paul needed, but having it was something truly special. When he’d told her they were planning a dinner party in order to introduce themselves—”A proper coming out” is how he’d awkwardly phrased it to her, immediately wishing he’d chosen literally any other words to use—to their island friends, Linda was the one who suggested she come as well.

“I’ll be a guaranteed friendly face,” she had said at the time, reminding Paul simultaneously of all the reasons he’d fallen in love with her in the first place, and all the reasons he had to be afraid of what people might say. 

Of course Paul had never really doubted for a moment that the friends they’d invited over would have any issue with the living and loving arrangements of their famous neighbours. On the contrary. But Paul had been prepared for questions and icy politeness; he’d even rehearsed a little speech, explaining their long history, what had led them to this point in time, how twenty-odd years after their first tentative steps toward one another they were finally together and _that’s something that ought to be celebrated_. He even included a line about, perfectly practiced, that emphasised without accusation the importance of discretion, their privacy in this matter, the distinct choice they’d made to tell each of them and no one else about the truth of their relationship. 

But Paul hadn’t needed any of it. Nothing beyond “Welcome to our home,” of course, to which the standard reply, from everyone who walked through the door, was some variation on “We thought you’d never ask us ‘round.” 

That, it seemed, was that. 

So Linda had taken up a seat across from Paul, cautiously protective even though there was no need to be, teasing the nearly-retired Peter about his sheep. Phyllis perched on her seat at Paul’s right side and regaled Dolores—twenty years her junior—and Mary—nearly twenty years her senior—with the adventure of building a new root cellar on their property that past summer. Finally, John pretended to understand the first thing about fishing boats while engaged in conversation with the career fisherman across the table from him. 

All the while, Herbie Hancock played in the background, wine flowed, and dishes heaped with steaming food from the pots and ceramic dishes resting on cork trivets in the center of the table were carefully, slowly, deliciously scraped clean. 

Paul watched the scene, deliriously drunk and drunkenly happy. Not since the height of their previous fame had he been as content to be surrounded by company, and not since the early days with Linda had he felt so much joy in one room. And if he could have gone back in time and told his younger self that, one day in the not-too-distant future, he’d have a widow, a retired school teacher, a restauranteur, a sheep farmer, a fisherman, and his own ex-wife over for dinner at the house in which he cohabited with John Lennon, he’d have never believed himself. 

He sighed, and Linda caught the moment and turned her attention to him. With her eyes only, she asked if he was okay; he nodded, leaning back in his chair as the conversations around him reached a lulling quiet.

Ever the malcontent when conversation dropped away, Phyllis clapped her hands together. “Well, what a lovely supper,” she said, casting her eyes about the table. “I can scarcely remember a time when I’ve had a more thoroughly enjoyable meal.” 

“Ah you’re welcome,” John said with a heavy sigh. “Slaved away over a hot stove all day, I did. I’m glad it was worth it.” 

“You never,” Paul teased, turning to their guests. “He made the bread.” 

“And didn’t I say it was gonna be the best part of the meal?” 

Dolores laughed. “Yer both right charmin’,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m _here _at all!” 

“I told ya, didn’t I?” Thomas chuckled, pointing a thick finger at his date. “She claimed t’ be a Ringo fan from way back, but I knew after five minutes wi’ you two, it’d be tits up fer me!” He clasped his hands over his heart in mock grief while the table laughed. “I’ve lost her! There goes my only chance at true happiness!” 

“Ah go on with yeh,” Dolores told him, waving her hand in front of her dismissively. “They’ve only got eyes fer each other anyway!” 

John made a show of batting his eyelashes in Paul’s direction, and Paul pushed his chair away from the table, dismissing John with a wave of his own hand. “Yeah well if he keeps this up, maybe he’ll be kippin’ in Phyllis’s new root cellar tonight instead.” 

Even John laughed at that. 

“And I think it’s nice, you know. You two together here.” Dolores continued. “These last two years, knowin’ that Paul McCartney lived here and then finding out that John Lennon was staying here too, I think I just expected that you’d built some grand recording studio or something. I never expected—” 

Paul felt his stomach drop, wondering if this was when the evening would turn, when the questions would start. His knee bounced under the table as he channelled all his energy into keeping the placid facade from cracking behind his eyes. Across the long table from him, he saw John doing much the same. 

“I just kept wonderin’ when the Beatles reunion would be announced,” Dolores continued with a keen smile as she looked around. “But now that I see the inside, there’s no _room _for a recording studio, even if you wanted one! I don’t even see yer instruments!” 

Relief coursed through Paul as he exhaled and made it sound like a laugh. “The guitars are all over the place. Cleverly hidden.” 

“Matter of fact, piano comes up from the middle of the sunroom floor,” John quipped, and Dolores—gullible to the end—let out a shocked gasp, which only made Thomas laugh harder. 

Paul felt nauseous all the same, and as a distraction he began to stack his plate and cutlery before offering to do the same for those around him, while the conversation turned back to the food, with Mary inquiring after the magic behind the stew. 

“The secret is the cinnamon,” Linda stage-whispered—and she would know; it was her recipe after all—and Mary, delighted, let out a gasp of recognition over the familiar taste she couldn’t quite put her finger on but which she could now name so easily. 

Paul he walked into the kitchen and the sounds of the dinner table conversation drifted away, he mentally tallied up the order of events for the rest of the night, thinking it was some way to get things under control. _We’ll clear the dishes, _he thought with a deep breath._ Tidy up, _he thought on the exhale. Another inhale: _Pour a few après dinner drinks. _Exhale: _Serve up the apple crumble Dolores brought over… _

“So how dull is this party?”

Paul whirled around to the door to see John, coming in behind him with a stack of his own plates from the far end of the table. “Couldn’t be worse,” he replied as nonchalantly as he could. 

“Total disaster.” 

Paul laughed as John put the plates and cutlery down. “Leave the dishes, yeah?” he said. “We’ll wash up tomorrow.” 

Paul nodded, running his hand through his hair and sighing. “Let me at least rinse them first?” 

“Fine,” John pouted. “And leave me in there with them. The Lennon charm, alone and unchecked.” 

“You’re not a child, John.” 

“I know,” he wrinkled his nose. “I just like winding you up.” 

“That so?” 

“Mm,” John slipped a hand along the waistband of Paul’s slacks, resting his fingertips in the small of his back. “Winding you up, getting you goin’…” 

Paul closed his eyes and hummed his approval. John’s touch had that effect on him; he felt his heart rate slow, his breathing even out. “Well, if you’re offering…” 

“‘Course,” John said, coming in close, close enough that Paul could smell his aftershave. He tingled from head to toe. “Let’s kick everyone out now and just you and me go enjoy our dessert…”

Paul groaned as John kissed the side of Paul’s neck; the idea was so incredibly appealing. “Yer killin’ me, Lennon.” 

“That’s the idea, McCartney,” John said. “Well, _la petite mort_ anyway…” 

Despite reaching the heights of orgasmic bliss less than three hours earlier, Paul felt himself ascending once again. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Patience, John.” 

“Never my strong suit.” 

“For me?” 

John nodded, pulled away, stood up tall. “Spoilsport,” he said. “You know just how to bend me to your will, and I hate it.” 

Paul smiled and pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of John’s lips just as Linda and Phyllis stepped in behind them, carrying another load of dishes. 

“Just set them on the counter,” John snarked as he stepped away from Paul. “Paul will do the washing up tomorrow.” 

Phyllis just laughed at the tease. “Let’s at least rinse ‘em off. Otherwise the food’ll cake on.” 

Paul shot John a look; John, retreating into the dining room once more, merely shrugged his shoulders. 

“You go on Mrs. Abernathy,” Paul said.

“Oh none o’ that, young man,” she scolded. “You’ll call me Phyllis or you’ll never get another egg from my hens, and no mistake!” 

Paul nodded. “I’ll finish tidying, _Phyllis_,” he said, and after a few seconds’ more coaxing, she followed in John’s footsteps, leaving Paul and Linda in the kitchen. 

“Lovely party, Paul,” Linda said. “You’ve outdone yourself.” 

“Ta,” Paul said, breathing out a sigh as he began to rinse off the plates. They fell back into a comfortable rhythm, as if no time had passed at all; Paul rinsed, and Linda arranged the dishes in the dishwasher. A different feeling of warmth and domesticity washed over him from the one he’d felt earlier, with John in the sunroom. It wasn’t shocking, of course. It wasn’t that long ago that he and Linda were He-and-Linda. It would have been weirder had the familiarity vanished. 

But there was now a clear line between that part of life and this one. He’d been Linda’s husband, and now, for all intents and purposes, he was John’s. There was no falsehood in either role—the love he shared with Linda was true—but the _grander_ truth, the one he’d run from for so long, that had pushed him first to Dot and then to Jane and into the beds of countless other women besides, as if proving to himself that that’s who he really was, was that at John’s side was the only place he felt real anymore. The only place he’d _ever _felt real. 

_Maybe that’s why this has been so easy_, he said. There was no lie, not anymore. And there was a room of people on the other side of the kitchen who were proof positive that there didn’t need to be a lie, either. It was… beautifully liberating. 

Then why did he feel so _out of sorts_? 

“You’re well then?” Linda asked, breaking the silence. 

“Yeah,” he said, convincingly. “You? The kids?” 

“Fine,” she said. “Looking forward to Christmas this year. In London.” 

Paul nodded. “I can’t wait,” he said. 

“And how’s John?” 

“He’s… fine." 

“He left the room pretty quickly when I came in,” Linda said. “I hope he’s not put off that I’m here.” 

“What?” Paul asked, turning to face her. “No, Lin, he’s perfectly well. He loves having you here. Always has. He’s just… tired, I think.” 

“Oh?” 

“Not sleeping well.” 

A pause; a stifled, girlish giggle. “Ohhh?” 

Paul shook his head at her unspoken innuendo. “Christ. No one’d believe you and I were ever married the way we carry on like this whenever we get together.” 

Linda joined in the laughter. “Well I for one don’t care what people think. You’re happy, and that makes _me_ happy. The rest doesn’t matter.” 

Paul nodded. “I’m… _relieved_ you still feel that way.” 

“You expected something different?” she said, setting down the dish in her hand. “We may not be husband and wife anymore but… well, I’m proud of you.” 

He scoffed. “What for?” 

“For living with such… _purpose_,” she said. “And for taking this step with your friends, who are _lovely _by the way. You never had anything to worry about.” 

“Maybe not,” Paul shrugged. “I’m still very glad you’re here.” 

She smiled, blushed a little into the apples of her cheeks. “You’re my children’s father. I still love you, Paul.” 

He cocked his head to the side. “Well it couldn’t have been easy for you. Any of this.” 

Linda shrugged. “No, but… no more difficult than it must have been for you to hide your love for so long, right? I mean, that’s got to count for something.” She set down the plate in her hand and turned to Paul. “I could never fault you and John for what you have. Everyone should be so lucky.” 

Paul smiled. “And I’ve been this lucky twice over,” he said.

She nodded. “I love you. And I love John. I just—I really hope you both know that.” 

“We do,” Paul nodded. 

Linda turned back to the dishwasher. “You know, if you and John wanted, you could both come down at Christmas. Then no one would have to spend the holidays alone.” 

Paul shook his head. “Actually, Julian will be here for Christmas, with Cynthia. And then Sean and Yoko will come over in the New Year, since John doesn’t really have much interest in being hassled by immigration in the States…” 

“Ah, well,” Linda nodded. “That makes sense. And I’m glad that he’ll be with his family.” 

“Absolutely,” Paul replied. “And maybe someday we’ll have a nice blended Christmas together. But for now, it’ll be nice to have Christmas at home in London with the kids and—” 

Linda shook her head. “Paul, _this _is home,” she smiled. “Everything about this place… this is home.” 

He nodded slowly and smiled, setting down the plate in his hand and turning to face Linda, kissing her forehead as he pulled her into his side. “Well, that was the idea, I suppose.” 

She chuckled. “We’re never going to finish these dishes.” 

He laughed. “I’ll finish. It’ll take me ten minutes. Why don’t you go on in and make sure John’s not pouring two-finger scotches,” Paul said, extending his index and pinky fingers to indicate the volume of spirits he was worried about. Linda smiled, nodded, and with the touch of her hand on his shoulder, she was gone. 

Paul blew out a sigh and looked at the vastly diminished but still overwhelming mess in the kitchen. The dishwasher was full; there were pots, baking dishes, mixing bowls, and several pieces of cooking cutlery still left to rinse. But Paul made the executive decision to simply fill both sinks and toss as much as he could in the soapy water to soak instead. With the door to the dishwasher closed, the machine active, and the water in the sink running hot, he took a soapy cloth and wiped down the counters, the stove top, and then took it into the dining room to do the same to the table. When all that was done and the sinks were full, he turned out all but the kitchen nightlight and made his way into the living room again, where a deep conversation was well underway.

“Well he was a professor of theoretical physics, y’see,” Mary said, her thick Glaswegian accent running roughshod over her well-lubricated words; she held a predictably stiff drink in her right hand as she spoke. Paul shot annoyed daggers across the room towards John. 

“You’re talking about your husband?” Paul interrupted as he came in. 

“Aye,” she nodded. “I dinnae ken half of what he talked about, always goin’ on with relativity this and black hole that parroting Schrödinger and Einstein at every turn and what-not, but just before he died he was startin’ to get interested in things like alternate universes.” 

As Paul took up a seat in the armchair nearest the fire, he heard Dolores gasp. 

“You mean like… science fiction?” 

“Oh aye,” Mary continued. “This is is some fuckin’ deep _Doctor Who _shit, I tell yeh.” 

John laughed out loud, and Paul knew it was just because a septuagenarian widow sitting in his living room drinking single malt had just swore—twice—in one sentence, and John was such a sucker for the gentility and propriety of the older generations recklessly thrown out the window. The shock on everyone else’s faces, lost entirely on Mary, proved to Paul that John wasn't the only one. 

“See, this is what I was gettin’ at earlier,” she continued. “He woulda said, my husband, that every choice you make creates a new and alternate universe to the one you currently find yourself in, but that you just don’t know it.” 

“Every choice?” Thomas asked. 

Mary nodded. “Every choice. You choose a red shirt instead of a blue one, there’s a branch, one where you wear red and one where you picked blue. You choose to buy this onion instead of that one, there’s a branch. And then your branches intersect with my branches and his branches and hers, and… well, what a tangled web we weave, quoth the Bard.” She winked. “If he were sittin’ here now, my John, he’d say that infinite possibilities and configurations exist for alternate universes based on decisions we made at this dinner table tonight, and that’s just eight people in a house on Skye. The mind boggles.” 

For his part, Paul thought it was a bit strange, the whole idea of parallel dimensions and alternate realities. _I saw that film, read that book, but it’s not my life_, Paul thought with a quick smile. But as he looked around the room he realized that he was in the minority. Dolores and Thomas were attached at the hip, delirious in their amazement at what Mary was describing; Phyllis had the look of ecstatic wonder in her eyes that Paul had so often seen in biblical illuminations of saints and sinners alike during moments of divine intervention. Even Linda appeared, from across the room, to have tears in her eyes. 

Everyone stared at everyone else, each in turn enraptured, exhilarated, mystified and much more besides by the information that Mary had laid at their feet. Paul was more than a little bit amused by it, this meeting of science and religion. 

Then Paul caught John’s eye. He looked… well, how _ did _ he look? Paul couldn’t place it. But he’d lost the colour in his cheeks, and his eyes were wide; he looked terrified is how he looked. Paul’s amusement turned darkly serious as he observed without being observed that John was decidedly not okay with the turn of conversation.

“No. I don’t like that,” Peter interjected. “I don’t wanna have to think about an alternate Peter Abernathy appearin’ out o’ thin air every time I wipe my arse. Not for me, thanks.” 

Bewildered laughter bubbled up from most of the guests. But Paul’s eyes, still trained on John, watched as he took a breath and prepared to speak. 

“Is that what you believe?” John asked Mary softly, his voice threaded through with existential fear. “That _every _decision makes an alternate reality?” 

Paul wanted to change the subject, steer it towards anything else. But something told him that John needed to hear Mary’s answer; he bit his tongue. 

“I don’t know,” she continued thoughtfully. “There are some branches of physics that lean towards that. But maybe it’s just certain choices that make the difference. I think I like that better, if it were up to me, which it’s not. But if it were… you know, it’s just tidier. Maybe a dozen or so really life-changin’ moments, big or small, or maybe… maybe it’s just certain days wherein the choices you make fundamentally alter the trajectory of your life, but on every other day the choices just don’t matter.” She grew thoughtful and quiet. “_That’s_ what I’d want. _That’s_ what I believe.” 

Peter scoffed. “It’s a bit daft…” 

“Is it though?” she asked with a shrug and a laugh. “Oh, maybe it is. But at least this way I get to imagine that there’s at least one other world out there where he’s still alive.” 

The sentiment hung in the air and sent chills up Paul’s spine. Everyone else in the room had gone silent. Only Linda was brave enough to break it.

“That’s beautifully put, Mary.” 

Mary smiled at her. “Thank you, dear,” she said, pausing a beat. “So do I win then?” 

Paul watched as the other six people in the room broke out into uproarious laughter. The spell—whatever it was or had been—was broken. 

“Oh, she talks a big game!” Thomas cried. 

“Can _you _quote Einstein?” Dolores countered. 

“Nae, I think it’s the husband we should award it to,” quibbled Peter. “_He’s_ the smart one.” 

“You_ would _say that!” his wife answered him. “And anyway, John hasn’t gone yet!” 

And at that, Mary yielded the floor, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes as she gestured to John in his chair on the far side of the circle. Paul watched, curiously, as John stood up. The look on his face wasn’t quite as shattered as it had been moments before but he hadn’t yet come through the other side of whatever crisis he’d been experiencing; that much was obvious, at least to Paul. 

John cleared his throat, took a breath. Paul watched him with bated anticipation. 

“There once was a man from Leeds…” 

More laughter cut him off; Dolores tossed a small throw pillow at him, hitting him in the chest as he laughingly protested. A chorus of “Give it to Mary!” filled the room. Even Martha, awoken from her nap, had joined in, wagging her tail and snuffling in excitement at Paul’s side. Finally Dolores, with all the pomp and ceremony befitting a knightly investiture, took a serving spoon and carved out the first scoop of apple crumble, set it on a plate, and handed it to Mary. 

“To the smartest person in the room.” 

“Present company excluded,” John quipped with a laugh. 

Paul just shook his head. “Christ Almighty,” he whispered. 

“Och, Paul didn’t go!” Phyllis said. 

But he raised his hands. “You couldn’t handle it,” he said, as everyone continued to laugh. 

It was the silliest thing Paul had seen in years, and he _ ached _ for it, as if it were a memory, a trick of nostalgia, like he was watching it on TV instead of witnessing it in his own living room. It felt unreal, ephemeral; Paul began to think—no, actually _ believe _—that, if he blinked, it would vanish from existence. But that didn’t make sense. Wasn’t he sitting here in this room with them all? Wasn’t that the warmth of the fire on the back of his arm? Couldn’t he smell the crackling logs and the faint scent of Linda’s perfume hanging in the air? Weren’t these his hands, puckered from the dishwater in the kitchen?

Panic rose in his chest as he felt the room spin and dilate around him; he thought he might pass out. His struggle to keep the irrational fear at bay was only made worse when he couldn’t find his fixed point, his north star; he couldn’t find John. As his breathing quickened and grew more shallow, he became acutely aware of someone standing in his field of vision. Someone holding a plate of apple crumble, extended outward towards his hand. 

“Are you okay, Paul?” John asked as he handed Paul the small dessert plate. 

The room flew back into focus and Paul shuddered through a breath. “Are _you?_” he returned. 

The look they shared spoke volumes about how neither of them felt okay, not in the slightest, but—surrounded by their guests, the neighbours they’d felt they could be most _themselves _with, in front of whom they didn’t need to pretend that they were just _friends _or _roommates_—there was nothing to do for it but smile and push through. The irony was not lost on Paul. 

“You looked like you’d seen a ghost a minute ago,” Paul breathed. 

“You too,” John said, lifting a hand to brush an errant bit of Paul’s hair from his forehead. “Maybe it was all the _parallel dimensions_.” 

Paul took the plate, grateful to have something to do with his hands, and smirked up at John, telegraphing his affection as best he could. John smiled; _Message received_. He sank to the floor in front of Paul’s chair, leaning his back against Paul’s knees. 

Paul relished the closeness. Balancing the plate on his left knee, he reached his hand out to the collar of John’s shirt, to the hair at the nape of his neck, and brushed his fingers along his skin. 

_He’s real_, Paul thought with a sigh. _He’s real and he’s here. _

_ And as long as I can touch him, that much is the only truth I need. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure I disappointed more than a few people to not have George and Ringo there, but this fit better with the story, I think...?


	4. Holding Back the Tears No More

It was midnight when the first goodbyes were said and their guests began to shuffle out to the vehicles that brought them to their door. Thomas, for whom “home” was a sailboat anchored in the loch, swung Dolores in his arms as they raced down to the dinghy that would take them out. His parting words, apart from a hearty thanks to them for not stealing his girl, was a shouted invitation to their inevitable nuptials, which seemed to be the first time Dolores had heard of it judging by the squeals of excitement and the impromptu makeout session on the beach that followed.

Peter and Phyllis were taking Mary, about a dozen sheets to the wind and now singing old Scottish folk songs at the top of her lungs, to her cottage up the coast a ways north before heading home themselves. On the landing, Mary pitched her arms around Paul’s neck; he had to stoop to embrace her back.

“He’s a good lad, your John,” she said. “I hope you have a hundred years together. A thousand. Love like this… play fer keeps, lad. That’s my advice.”

Paul liked the sound of that very much.

Linda was staying at the nearby Ullinish Country Lodge, having refused their offer of the spare room; she was the last to leave. 

“I’m heading back to Kintyre tomorrow,” she said as she slipped on her coat, flipping her hair out from under the collar. “And we’ll see you on Christmas Eve?”

“You will,” Paul replied.

She embraced John, genuine warmth exuding from her voice as she lifted a hand to cup his cheek. “Get some sleep, John,” she said.

“I’ll try.”

“Good,” she looked askance at Paul with a half smile before turning back to John. “Maybe let him sing to you. Always worked for me.”

“Yeah,” John agreed. “Except when he tries to bring piano to bed for accompaniment, eh?”

Linda laughed and played along. “Yeah, I don’t miss that.”

“Scratchin’ up the walls. Annoying git…”

Paul put his hands on John’s shoulders. “Okay,” he said. “That’ll be enough of that…”

She laughed and John laughed and when they stopped and the air settled around them, it was warm and inviting. Linda leveled her eyes at them, her smile broad, and sighed. “Lovely,” she breathed. “Goodnight you two.”

When the door finally shut on the cool December night, Paul was utterly spent and John looked about the same. They blinked slowly and smiled in each other’s direction.

“We survived today,” Paul said, a cold shiver running up his spine as the words left his mouth.

John nodded, his face still criss-crossed by shadows. “Yes we did. Spectacularly well, if I do say so."

“Bed?”

John surprised him. “Tidy first, then bed,” he winked. “But not sleep… not yet…” 

As they moved through the house, picking up glasses and plates and dessert forks from the tables in the living room and dining room, straightening up as they went, a churning undercurrent pushed and pulled them in swirling eddies around one another, tempting them with but not granting them the closeness that they’d wanted all night. 

It was only when the last of the crumbs were wiped from the counter and the final downstairs light was switched off that they crashed together, tired and hungry as they ascended the stairs in the clumsy dark without tripping, over stair treads and discarded clothing and their own feet caught up on heavy breaths that dropped from their lips in between kisses. It was a miracle they made it to the bed at all. 

But they didn’t sleep, just as John predicted. Not yet. 

It took nearly a full hour to coax the weight of the day off their shoulders, to reach the fullness of erotic expectation, to finally forget who they were as they lost track of their senses together. Paul had always gone willingly, following John every time off the brink of whatever cliff he was leading them toward. But tonight he couldn’t erase the shadows in John’s eyes, the ones that hid his face and clouded his voice, pulling him far away from where Paul wanted him. So it was up to Paul to lead this time, choosing where to put his hands, his lips, his tongue, in order to turn John into the song he’d been trying to write for more years than he could count; a song finally composed in tones pitched and keyed to sound best as keening moans, soft harmonic sighs, a chorus of ecstasy, written in the notepaper of their flushed skin with kisses as the ink, marked off to whatever tempo their hearts were beating out from within their chests. Paul’s greatest project, with his truest collaborator. 

Finally it was with John deep inside him that the crescendo crashed and they collapsed in tangled sheets at the end of it all, drifting off to dreamless sleep under heavy winter blankets and the billions of stars pinpricking the sky outside the window…

* * *

John’s agitation woke Paul slowly; at first he simply thought he was dreaming. But as soon as he heard John shout his name—shouted through ravaged vocal cords, edged with fear that Paul had never heard before wrapped so claustrophobically around John’s words—only then did he bolt upright, alarm shocking through his veins.

In the icy light from the window, Paul saw John’s face screwed up in fear, or pain, or anger; it was hard to tell. He tossed from his side onto his back, kicked his legs. The blanket was thrown clear from his body, revealing sweat-slicked skin, head to toe. Paul reached out a hand and rested it on John’s bare shoulder, then thought better of it and cupped John’s face.

“John love,” Paul said, stroking his thumb across John’s cheekbone as the older man awoke. His eyes were hard, squinted, darting left and right as he scanned the room before landing on Paul’s face; there, he softened, and began to cry.

“Oh Paul…”

John rolled over into Paul’s side, without hesitation, Paul folded him against his body, rocking him in the center of the bed. “Ssh, John.... it’s alright… you’re safe, you’re here… nothing’s wrong…”

“Ohhhh…” John groaned, his breathing shallow and rapid. He clutched his chest. “Paul, I’m having a heart attack or something. I just fuckin’ know it.”

“You’re not,” Paul said. “Just breathe… deep breaths…”

“It’s fuckin’ awful… I can’t fuckin’ shake it… somethin’ terrible…” 

At that moment, John pushed himself away from Paul. “I have to call Cyn,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “What time is it in New York?”

Paul squinted in the darkness at his alarm clock; it read 3:52am. He counted backwards five hours. “Almost eleven.”

John threw on his robe, ran shaking hands through his hair. “I’ll call Cyn then I’ll call Yoko,” he muttered. 

“Why?”

He couldn’t stand still, pacing at the end of the bed. “I just… I need to hear their voices.”

Paul nodded. “Okay,” he said, even though it wasn’t; he didn’t understand any of what was happening. He reached over to the bedside table and grabbed the receiver off the telephone base. “I’ll give you the room…”

But John took the receiver and the base and continued his pacing as he dialled his first ex-wife’s telephone number. Then he walked out into the hallway, the long cord connecting the phone to the wall slipping through the gap below the door as he shut it tightly behind him, leaving Paul bewildered and alone on the bed.

Several minutes elapsed in virtual silence. Paul’s heart rate returned to normal and he raked his fingers through his hair with a heavy sigh. He’d felt it too; he hadn’t wanted to admit it, but the fear that John had been describing had run through his veins from the moment he realized that something was wrong with John.

He remembered the moment in the living room, the feeling that the world in which he existed was somehow temporary, and that whatever tenuous grasp he had on it all was weakening. He struggled to make sense of what was happening, the way the room seemed to flicker and glow at the edge of his vision; he thought maybe he was having a migraine, wished that was the answer, because it would make so much more sense than the alternative. 

But in the midst of it all, he could suddenly remember other moments like this one, when the world had pitched sideways and thrown him off balance, destabilizing him in ways he’d never known. The day his mother died… the day he’d met John for the first time… the day John had announced his intention to leave the band… 

_ Pivotal moments _ , Paul thought.  _ Pivotal days…  _

“You’re being superstitious,” he chided himself softly as he, too, stood up and found his robe, pushing past the discomfort in order to function. He was up now; without John there, at least, sleep would be a foreign concept. If he could just tiptoe past him in the stairwell, he could get downstairs to brew some tea, start the process of calming John down again.

Of calming  _ himself  _ down again.

He opened the door a crack, careful to avoid the creak in the hinge by lifting the handle as it reached the point in the arc when the offensive sound appeared and preempting it. Silently, he stepped out into the hallway to find John sitting five steps down, as far as the cord would allow. His knees were drawn up under his chin; he sat hunched forward, the phone against his right ear.

“And Sean?” he asked softly, growing quiet as he waited for an answer. “No, don’t wake him… Are you sure? Everyone’s okay? You’re okay?... What about Kyoko?... I don’t know, Yoko… I can’t describe it… No, it’ll be okay… I just needed to hear it from you…”

Paul leaned against the doorframe, watching as his love fretted his way through the coils on the telephone cord, slipping his finger through the loops one by one and then slipping them off again. Even in the dim half light, Paul could see he was still shaking. He wanted to sit beside him, give him his own hand to worry with. But this was a private moment, one he shouldn’t be intruding on; he suddenly felt strange about standing there, and wished he’d waited for John to finish before opening the door. Trapped now, he had to wait it out.

“I’ll be fine,” John said finally. “No, he’s here… No need… okay, I’ll tell him… right. You too. Good night.”

He replaced the phone on the cradle and set it down on the step. Then he sniffled. “You can come down now, Paul.”

“I didn’t mean—” Paul started. “I was just going to the kitchen… make some tea or something. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“No, it’s fine.”

Paul took the steps slowly until he was at John’s side. Moving the phone out of the way, he sat down. “Is everything okay?”

John nodded. “Woke Cyn up. She wasn’t too pleased with me but—” he sniffled again. “Yoko hadn’t gone to bed yet. Kids are fine. Ex-wives are fine. Everyone’s fine.”

Paul slipped his hand against John’s. “Except for you.”

John nodded. He took a deep, gulping, shuddering breath and used his free hand to wipe the tip of his nose. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I really don’t. I’m just…” he sighed. “I’m going fuckin’ mental, Paul. I’m losin’ it. It’s overwhelming, this feeling.”

“Is it still there?” Paul hadn’t quite escaped the pressing-in himself, but as the seconds ticked on the heaviness flaked away, piece by piece. Sitting here with John, simply holding his hand, helped immensely.

As if in response, John squeezed Paul’s hand in his own. “It’s going away,” he affirmed, taking another deep breath, a little less forcefully this time. “Yoko suggested a meditation or something. Tea too.” He chuckled. “As much as maybe you don’t want to admit it, you two might be on the same wavelength or something.”

Paul chuckled.  _ Only when it comes to you _ , he thought. Either way, he wanted to change the subject, push through the last flustering dregs of this moment into whatever was on the other side. “Come on, la’,” he said as cheerfully as he could as he stood up. “I’m not gonna be able to sleep for a while and I suspect neither will you.”

“No, you’re right.”

So Paul lifted John’s hand, coaxing him to stand, and kissed him on the cheek. “You go back up, settle in. I’ll make the tea.”

John was toil-worn and wholly depleted but did as he was told. Paul waited until he was inside before retreating into the darkened recesses of the main floor. By the light of the kitchen nightlight, he filled the electric kettle with water and set it to boil; he fished their mugs from the cupboard; he tossed one teabag into each. Then he waited. He waited for what seemed like an eternity. He waited until the kettle’s roiling bubble died down and the steam from the spout fogged up the kitchen window above, waited until the vapour condensed on the cold glass, waited until water droplets coursed downward to collect on the sill between an hourglass-shaped egg timer and a book of matches. 

Waited for the words to say came to him. But he was, for the first time in a long time, utterly bereft. 

_ What was happening to them? _

The clock sounded out the half hour with a shallow chime as he finally climbed the stairs again. 

John was sitting in the wide window seat opposite the bed, looking out over the water of the seafront down below. The radio was on, playing some quiet, soft jazz from John’s bedside table. He’d turned on the television as well, there in the corner of the room; nothing but the BBC 2 test card showed on the screen, but the ambient light was, Paul knew, something of a comfort to John, who would frequently leave televisions or radios on no matter what he was doing, just for company. 

He looked at John, insomnia staining his tired eyes, and sighed. “Here,” he said, handing him his tea.

John didn’t reply at first, lost in shattered thought as he looked out the window for a long second before dragging his eyes towards Paul. “Ta,” he replied, blowing over the top of the steaming liquid but not drinking from it. He just held it there against his lips, blowing currents over the water. “Fuck I could go for a smoke right about now…”

“I think I’ve got some downstairs if you—”

John flicked his eyes up to meet Paul’s. “No,” he said, reaching out to grab Paul’s hand. “Stay with me?”

It wasn’t exactly a question, because John had to have known that Paul would stay without needing to be asked, but the cadence of his voice left no doubt about John’s state of mind: he was desperate, and desperately alone. Paul wanted nothing more in that moment than to hold him, reassure him.  _ I’d never leave you.  _

He simply muttered a soft “Of course,” as he sat down on the other end of the seat, his back against the wall opposite John, and set his mug down on the windowsill before crossing his legs. John in turn settled, relaxed, and leaned back against his own wall, looking back out over the loch. There was no moon that night, so the sky was brilliantly brightened by the sheer breadth and volume of stars visible in the western sky. Beyond that, as Paul’s eyes swept across the expanse of the darkened loch and toward the north, he saw the ribbons of pale green light ripple across the sky, just above the horizon, and just as they’d been doing almost every night this week above the clouds that had usually socked them in, obscuring them from view. 

“Aurora borealis,” he whispered.

“Hm?” John asked, before turning to look at what had captured Paul’s attention. Then he sighed. “Well, would you look at that…”

Paul couldn’t remember the first time he’d seen the northern lights, or the last time, but he did remember hearing a news report about solar flares and geomagnetic activity in recent days, so their presence—while shockingly infrequent in this part of the world, and stunningly beautiful to behold—didn’t completely surprise him. He hadn’t expected to see them, but they were in all respects absolutely breathtaking.

Still, the rarity of the auroral display and the fact that it was occurring  _ now _ , this week, when everything had been going so topsy-turvy, gave Paul pause. He felt his heart shudder in his chest, knitting his brows together. “John?”

John didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Paul, I know you don’t believe in all this, but—”

“Don’t say that,” Paul told him, gulping against the words in his throat. “I-I felt…  _ something _ too.”

“You did?” John asked before realization dawned. “No, I knew you did. Earlier tonight…”

Paul nodded. “At the party. And then again just now, when you first woke up, when I heard you call my name… I had this feeling that—”

“That something bad was going to happen? To someone you loved?”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “To you. To us. To all of this.” He took a breath. “Like none of it was real anymore.”

It was hard to tell in the darkness but Paul saw John’s eyes widen as his already ashen face paled even further. But he nodded. “I think I know what you mean,” he said. “Except for me it was…  _ me _ that wasn’t real.  _ I _ didn’t feel real.”

Paul swallowed. “What Mary was talking about tonight… alternate universes…” he laughed nervously. “I mean, that’s crazy, right?”

“We’ve had crazier things happen to us, haven’t we?” John queried. “We’ve shared dreams. We’ve communicated without words.”

Paul felt a cold rush of realization flood over him. “The first time we took LSD…”

“Right, see?” John said with a nod as he sighed. “I’m relieved you don’t think  _ I’m _ crazy.”

“Who’s to say, y’know?” Paul replied, still thinking about the strange occurrences. He flashed his eyes at John with an apologetic smile as he registered what John had said. “No, I don’t mean that  _ you’re _ crazy, I meant… well, who’s to say what any of this is.”

“I know,” John said. “But… what if, somewhere else… what if there’s some other place where something really bad  _ did _ happen this week? Tonight?” He shook his head. “What if today is one of those dates that Mary was talking about? One of those dates that have all that significance?”

Paul reached over to grasp John’s hand as the thought took root and began to spread. It was alarming, disturbing, and tantalizing all at once; his mind raced over his mental calendars, reciting dates that he already knew in his heart of hearts were not only significant— _ October 31, 1956… July 6, 1957… September 20, 1969… _ —but, maybe, somehow…

It all came out in one gulping rush of excitement. “The northern lights, you know, all week they’ve been out, John. Maybe there’s something linked to that? Electrically or magnetically or… or  _ cosmically _ or whatever…” The idea was teasingly alluring; it made him want to ring up every astronomical research station he could find to ask for records he could use to match up solar flares with his history, to all those dates. “Maybe they’re like… I don’t know,  _ conduits _ for this kind of thinking. Maybe we’re just tuning in, you know, to the weird natural occurrences or something—” 

But John wasn’t really listening. “What’s stopping every choice we make from being our last, Paul?” he asked. “I could go out to town tomorrow and get in an accident. You could have tripped on the telephone cable in the hall just now and broken your neck. What’s to stop any of that from happening?”

Paul paused, grew silent, and cocked his head to the side. “Well… nothing, John,” he said. 

John shivered. “I don’t like the thought of that,” he said, his voice rising in pitch. “I don’t like it at all.”

This wasn’t about alternate universes or the aurora borealis anymore; this was philosophical, eschatological, religious, existential. Paul slid a little closer to him on the bench. “Look, John, we can be paralyzed by fears that may never come true or we can take each day and—”

“Doesn’t that  _ scare _ you?” John asked. 

“To the depths of my soul. Like nothing else ever has,” Paul said, scooching even closer and gripping John’s hand in his. “When I woke up and heard you crying, when I thought something had happened to you… John, we’ve only just started. If all this were to vanish… if something  _ were _ to happen to you…” Paul trailed off as the profound unfairness of it hit him square in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He took in a gasping breath. 

“Well I don’t plan on anything happening,” John said. “But that’s the crux of it all, innit? That we just  _ don’t _ know,  _ can’t _ plan…”

“Exactly,” Paul said finally. “So then every minute here, with you and me, is that much  _ more _ , isn’t it? Because you just don’t know. But that’s  _ life _ , man. That’s what all of this is about.”

John nodded and looked out over the sea again. “I never used to think about this before I met you,” he said, turning back to Paul. “Well, before we got back together, I mean.” He lifted his hand to Paul’s cheek. “It feels like I’ve never  _ not _ known you…”

Paul leaned into his touch. “We’ve  _ wasted _ so many years, the two of us...” 

“Too many.”

“And I don’t want to waste any more on worries and fear.” 

John was silent for a very long moment. Paul could feel his hands, still trembling, as he thought about what to say next. “Then we won’t, okay?”

“Okay,” Paul replied. “We’ll live every day as if it’s our last.”

“No,” John shook his head. “As if it’s our  _ first _ .”

Paul smiled. “Deal.”

John turned to look out at the scene beyond the window pane. “I don’t want to fuckin’ meditate,” he muttered. “And I don’t want tea.”

“That’s fine,” Paul stroked the back of his hand with his thumb.

“But maybe you could sing to me?”

At that Paul had to laugh. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Sure,” Paul smiled. “Any requests?”

The western sky was still pitched and inky when John and Paul drew the shades again and crawled back under the covers. Their tea sat forgotten in the windowsill, entirely unsipped, steeped to brown-black bitterness that they would dump down the drains the next morning when they finished the washing up. 

But that was for tomorrow, even though it  _ was _ tomorrow when Paul finally held John against his side and began to sing, snippets of lyrics and a melody half-finished, a thing he’d been toying with as the nights grew longer and colder, the sweaters heavier, the meals heartier, his heart mightier. John rested his head on Paul’s chest as he hummed and whisper-sang the only words he had, the only ones he’d settled on:

_ “You are here today… and you are in my song…” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was an increase in sun spot activity throughout 1980 as the sun reached solar maximum, but I didn't dig deep enough to see if the northern lights were visible at all in northern Scotland at that time. 
> 
> I know that it's usually said that the northern lights aren't visible from these latitudes, but I live at 53°N and see them quite often, and the Isle of Skye is at 57°N... so let's bend the rules of reality a little and have them appear for our intrepid duo tonight, eh?


	5. Just Like Starting Over

9 December 1980  
Isle of Skye  
10:14 am

Paul awoke alone in bed. At first he didn’t register that he was alone, as it was never something he ever thought would happen; John was not an early riser, and would stay in bed indefinitely if given the opportunity, so it was a rare thing indeed for Paul to be alone in bed at any hour. 

But as the events of the night before filtered back to him, his alarm at the situation began to rise. 

In the harsh light of day, there was none of the wispy and unwelcome dreaminess that had made such a mockery of their little home by starlight hours earlier. Everything felt real, hard-edged and cold. And quiet. Too quiet. Even Paul himself felt rooted and firm; nothing about anything felt changeable or wispy. Normally that wouldn’t be cause for concern, but as his arm shot out into the vacated space on John’s side of the bed, Paul’s heart sank. He didn’t even feel the remnants of warmth to suggest that John had just gotten up. Instead his hand swirled through cool cotton, untouched by the heat of his lover’s body. Paul sat up and looked around him, suddenly forgetting everything—what day it was, what time it was, where he ought to be—except for the fact that John, unequivocally, should be beside him, and he wasn’t. 

It was real. This was real. And  _ this _ reality seemed to be rearranging itself in the most unwelcome of ways.

“John?” he called out as he scrambled out of bed, pulling on a t-shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants draped over the chair in the corner. “John, where are you?” 

His hands trembled as he reached for the door, tripping—nearly—over the cord from the phone that still wrapped its way around the corner and into the landing. And Paul stopped, looking down at the thin cable, following its cord as it continued down the stairs and connected to the base, there on the fifth step down, right where they’d left it. 

The breath he took then felt as though his lungs had found air for the first time.

Paul made it all the way down the stairs and into the kitchen before he heard the sound of a voice on the beach, intercut with the sound of a dog barking. He followed the sound until he was out in the sunroom, with a view of the morning stretching out before him, shrouded in fog. He slipped on a pair of Birkenstocks, shrugged on the heavy wool cardigan hanging from the hook beside the back door, and stepped out from the sunroom to the meadow behind the house.

John was on the beach, twenty-five feet from the house, throwing a piece of driftwood into the surf for Martha to fetch. Fifteen years old, she bounded into the water and returned with the stick in her mouth, running up to John as if she were a puppy. John would praise her, loudly complimenting her fetching skills, before throwing the stick back, each time further than the last. Paul stood there for several minutes, hands on his hips, heart thudding in his chest but for entirely different reasons now, watching the scene undetected until finally John looked up to the house and waved. 

Paul had never felt more relief than in that moment. As John began to make his way towards the grass, Martha at his heels, Paul—rubber-legged after the rush of adrenaline—strove to meet them halfway. 

“You’re up early,” Paul said, trying to hide his agitation with a smile.

“No,  _ you _ slept in.”

Martha reached Paul first, demanding a bit of attention before shaking off all the water in her fur and flopping onto the grass.

“Good morning all the same,” Paul replied.

John kissed him on the cheek. “Mornin’. I made breakfast. It’s on the stove.”

Paul didn’t even attempt to hide his shock. “You made—”

“Full English. No sausage though. Well,  _ I _ had the sausage. Left you all the herbivore ‘treats’,” he flashed a goofy, toothy grin as he inserted air quotes around the word. His eyes, still shaded by lack of sleep, were brighter than they’d been in some time; someone had punched a hole through the ice, and there was glistening, glittering water flowing underneath. “There’s enough coffee, too, in the percolator. Might want to warm it up a bit though.”

Paul shook his head and laughed. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked. “First I wake up and you’re gone—nearly gave me a heart attack, by the way—and now I hear you’ve been cooking  _ breakfast  _ and making  _ coffee _ and—”

“Well after last night…” John trailed off, a smile on his face. “Paul, I feel reborn. Like a weight’s been lifted.”

“That so?” Paul beamed at him.

He nodded. “Not going to waste another minute,” he said. “Welcome to the first day of first days.”

Paul reached over and grasped John’s hand, lifting it to his lips to kiss him. “I love you,” he said. “I just… thought you should know.”

“I love you too, Paul,” John countered. “Now why were you so worried about where I’d gone?”

Paul chuckled. “Well… it’s just not often that you’re up before me, you know, and… I suppose after our conversation… the thought crossed my mind that maybe…” he swallowed and shrugged. “...you know, that maybe, alternate universes being what they are…”

“You thought I’d been spirited away, didn’t you?” he teased. “The northern lights or Mary’s husband come to steal me from you?”

Paul was loathe to admit it but it was true. Even seeing John in the flesh, he worried. “It just scared me.”

“What does?”

Paul shrugged. “You being not-here felt… final,” he said. “LIke this was the reality that had been chosen, somehow.” He shook his head. “I thought I’d never see you again, and that wasn’t what I wanted to be real.”

They were still holding hands, and had begun to stroll down the path that separated the grassy meadow from the rocks of the beach. Martha, keen to be included, jogged just ahead of them.

“But I’m here,” he said. “And it is real. Us. This. All of it.”

Paul squeezed John’s hand. “I know.”

Not content to let a moment of true sentiment pass by unscathed, John allowed a sheen of sarcasm to coat his next words. “But let me ask you then, since you’re now a _firm believer_ in all that… oh, how did she put it? ‘Fucking deep _Doctor Who _shit’?” John chuckled. “Let me ask: if there _is _an alternate universe, do you think you and I are together there?”

Paul looked down at his feet, his cold toes exposed to the winter sea chill, and shrugged. “I hope so. It’d be a crying shame if we weren’t.”

John nodded and looked off to the horizon. “I could easily see a world in which we never spoke again after the breakup,” John said. “Just as easily as I could see a world in which we never broke up to begin with.”

“Yeah?”

He shrugged. “If we traced back all the decisions we made—okay maybe not  _ all  _ the decisions… but the big ones, the big moments… I mean, maybe that’s a place to start.”

“I don’t follow.”

John had a smirk on his face. “Say there are five pivotal moments, from the moment you’re born until now, where the decision you make drastically alters your future. What would our five be?”

“Oh John, I don’t want to play a game of ‘What If’.”

He just ignored him. “The fête, for starters,” he said. “Whatever date that was.”

“July 6,” Paul said.

“1956?”

“1957,” Paul corrected. “Christ, you don’t even remember the year?”

John shrugged. “I had a lot of me mind, Macca,” he said, turning a quizzical eye to Paul. “How do you remember it so well?”

“Well I’d just turned 15, for starters.”

“Fuck,” John blew out a whistle. “To think I had it so bad for you and you were barely out of diapers.”

Paul swatted him with his hand, much to John’s enjoyment. 

“All right, your turn,” John continued. “What’s another date?”

Paul thought about it. “Maybe the day we met Brian.”

“How is that  _ our _ date?” John shook his head. “You’re not playin’ this game right…”

“Well…” Paul smirked and lowered his head, suddenly a schoolboy all over again. “I mean, as much as I liked seein’ you in them tight leathers, it was Eppy who put you in a proper suit, and after that, you know…”

John laughed and Paul leaned in to kiss his shoulder. They hunkered together as they walked. The sound of the waves, of Martha’s plodding on the beach up ahead, their own feet crunching on the rocky shoal, cocooned around them, filling their ears. Grounding them. The fog was lifting but there was still a sense of ensconcement, of privacy, of being hidden from the eyes of the world; it made Paul brave, made anything seem possible.

“Paris,” he breathed without thinking, leaning in again to John’s shoulder. “Kissing you for the first time on a bridge in Paris…” 

John nodded. “You were a bold thing then,” he said. “I fell in love with you on that bridge, you know.”

“I know,” Paul said. “You told me so. You wrote me a song all about it.”

“Yes I did,” John answered. “I wrote you a lot of songs. You always fixed ‘em up nice, so we could package them fer the girls.”

Paul smiled. “You never let me forget who they were really about, though.”

“Every fuckin’ night I could,” John said, squeezing Paul to his side. “How we never got discovered is an absolute miracle, I swear. I could barely keep my hands off you.”

“I remember.”

“So then the day we decided to stop touring has got to be another one,” John added. “No more sneaking around hotel rooms. We could spend days together, at your house, at mine… if we’d never done that, if we’d kept up screwing around behind flimsy locked doors in cities all over the fuckin’ world, we’d’ve for sure gotten caught…”

Paul hummed his approval. “Instead we got a precursor to this,” he said, looking around them at where they lived now, and remembering breakfasts in Cavendish Avenue, late-night jam sessions at Kenwood, the long drives in between when they’d pull off to some quiet side street, unable to keep their hands to themselves and trying to make it in the front seat of Paul’s Mini Cooper. He chuckled. “Who could’ve known that we’d be here some day?”

“I always hoped,” John said firmly. “I  _ always  _ hoped. But I never thought it would come true.”

Paul nodded against John’s shoulder and grew soft and quiet.  _ He’d always hoped… _ he thought.  _ Is that why it all crashed and burned?  _ He swallowed, hard. 

“That day you told us you were leaving the band.”

There was a long pause then, filled only by the sound of their feet crunching on the beach. “I didn’t mean it.” John said finally

Paul knew that. Well, he knew that  _ now _ . “I didn’t read minds, John,” he said. “Still don’t, matter of fact.”

“You do though,” John said. “You should’ve known I didn’t mean it.”

Paul bristled. “Well, fuck me for taking you at your word, Lennon, yeah?”

“No need to get touchy about it.”

_ Easy for you to say _ , Paul wanted to quip. “I bore the brunt of all that, for years. But everyone else had checked out before me at one time or another. Ritchie, George. You. I just figured I’d finalize it. But you all started it, and I paid the price...”

“I don’t want to fight, Paul.”

Paul sighed. “Neither do I.” Suddenly, he couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it, how little any of it mattered anymore. “All the time we  _ wasted _ fighting, hurting each other, for nothing.”

“It led us here, didn’t it?” John said. “I mean, maybe that’s what matters.”

Paul nodded, impressed at John’s sudden contentment, his wisdom. “You are different today. You were never this smart before.”

John kicked a pebble. “New leaf, son,” he replied. “Now whether it’s because I was forced to  _ eat  _ the leaf or merely just  _ turn it over _ remains to be seen, but…”

Another jab at Paul’s vegetarianism; he scoffed and almost let it slide. “Twat,” he muttered with a sly grin.

“We should go somewhere,” John said suddenly.

“Well, I need to head into town,” Paul offered. “Need to buy a new handle for the shed and—”

“No, I mean… a holiday,” John insisted.

“A holiday?”

“Yeah you know… a thing people do when they want a break from the _other_ things they have to do. A fuckin’ holiday.”

Amused, Paul stood up, considering. “A holiday.”

“Shit, Paul, yes. A holiday.” He seemed exasperated, but not to the point of annoyance. Instead he peered at Paul over the rims of his glasses and smirked. “Someplace warm and naked,” he shivered as he wrapped his arms around Paul’s waist and shimmied behind him as they walked. “I wanna watch you swim and sunbathe all day long and then I want to stay up all night…”

Paul laughed. “All right, now you’re scaring me,” he said.

John just ignored him, barrelled onward, both in speech and gait as he unwrapped himself from Paul and walked ahead. “And then I think we should get into the studio again.”

At this, Paul stopped walking entirely. “You do?”

“Yeah,” John’s reply was nonchalant, even as he continued walking for a few steps before realizing he’d lost his partner behind him. “I mean, it’s been a while. I’ve heard you tinkering, and I’ve been… well I’ve been messing around with a few ideas myself, and after Dolores mentioned it last night—” 

Paul was overjoyed. “Together you mean?”

“No, joint custody,” John deadpanned. “You get the studio Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I’ll take it the others. We alternate Sundays.  _ Of course  _ together, you daft prick…”

Paul just shook his head and laughed. It would have been a lie to say that he hadn’t considered it, but seeing as how their professional lives together had largely imploded beyond repair just ten years earlier, he’d never considered it  _ seriously _ .

But there was no reason not to anymore. Hiding away on a beach in Scotland was wonderful and romantic; this was a life he never knew he could have. Last night, however, had been the first step towards a different life. A public life. 

With John. 

And to record again? Together?

Paul was over the moon. He closed the space between him and John and threw his arms around John’s shoulders and buried his face, his nose, into John’s neck, inhaling the scent of his soap and their laundry detergent and the sea off his skin. John threaded his arms around Paul, grounding him there on the beach, atop the battered sea shale and tumbled rocks and broken shells that littered the ground on which they had chosen to set their roots together.

John sighed into Paul’s neck. “I take it this is a good thing?” he asked, his voice muffled. “You’re happy?”

Paul just held John all the more tightly. Because it had never been his desire to dissolve The Beatles—months of depression and darkness and drinking had been the clear testament to that—but now that they were talking about going back into the studio, it seemed like all of that pain and hardship was finally leading to something…  _ beautiful _ . He didn’t want to jinx it, but they’d matured and grown as individuals and learned from the mistakes that had sent their supernovas spiralling into one another so dramatically, scattering them to all points of the universe as far away from each other as possible. Now that their orbits had fallen back in sync… well, maybe they could communicate, openly and honestly, in a way they hadn’t done before. 

Maybe it was all—dare he say it—worth it in the end. And maybe—surely—it would be different this time around.

“Can we invite George and Ring?” Paul asked.

John shrugged, laughed, nodded. “I mean, if they want to,” he said, adding: “Eventually, though. Let’s figure this out first, you and me.”

Paul didn’t want to get ahead of himself but it all sounded too good to be true; he wanted someone to pinch him, half-desired to throw himself into the cold waters of the loch to shock him awake, thinking maybe he was still dreaming. 

Instead he cocked his head to the side, switching gears. “You’ve been tinkering?”

John wavered. “A bit. Nothing serious,” he said. “It’s been five years since I recorded anything. Maybe it’s shite but…”

“I haven’t  _ heard _ you tinkering.”

“I turn the volume way down on my acoustic so it doesn’t bother you when you’re doing the knitting, dearie,” he teased, shaking his head and clearing his throat with a nonchalant shrug. “It’s nothing. A little song… kind of aping the greats, you know. Elvis. Orbison. Us, when we was young and foolish and rockers to our core.” He cleared his throat. “Back to the roots. Hit the reset button, you know. Start over clean and fresh.” He winked at Paul. “Dig out the ol’ leathers.”

Paul smiled. “Well I’d love to hear it, if you… I mean, if you want to share.” He suddenly felt awkward about it; it had been years since either one of them had offered a song to the other for thoughts and critique. 

John cleared his throat again; clearly whatever Paul was feeling was echoed in John’s hesitant reaction. This wasn’t entirely unfamiliar water in which they were treading, it was just as though the water levels had risen and the topography of the shoreline had changed. It would take some getting used to again. 

_ Let’s figure this out first, you and me. _

Paul didn’t have to be asked twice.

“And your song last night,” John asked. “New one?”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “It kind of… you know, came out of nowhere all at once a few days ago.”

“Like ‘Yesterday’,” John said.

Paul offered a nervous laugh. “Yeah, except I’m relatively certain I didn’t nick this from anyone.”

“Well it’s good. Nice. Melodic as always.”

“It’s not finished.”

John looked at him. “So we’ll work on it. You and me in the front parlour, eyeball-to-eyeball…”

_ As if today couldn’t get any better. _

At that moment, Martha came bounding back down the beach, emerging from the fog with a new stick in her mouth, and John reached down to retrieve it. “Good girl,” he scrubbed her between the ears and turned around to throw the stick back the way they’d come from, and they watched as Martha took off again. 

“Okay, let’s not get too caught up in future plans,” John said as the beach grew quiet again. “It’s only our first day after all.”

Paul squeezed John’s hand. “So what do you want to do today?”

John just smiled at him. “This,” he said. 

_ This _ . 

It sounded, to Paul’s ears, to be just about the most perfect thing in the entire world.

“Okay, Macca,” John said, his voice a tender mix of awe and happiness. “ _ This _ works.”

Paul didn’t have to look out at the sea or the house or feel the earth beneath his frozen toes to know it; he just had to look straight ahead, into the eyes of the only person who would ever truly know him to know that  _ this _ , right here—captured within his gaze, fully seen and loved by a man with eyes that squinted to see at all, with a day's worth of stubble on his chin, with smudges under those eyes and sea salt in the hollows of his cheeks, with angles in his face and his body and the way that he walked that added up to the full circle that had brought him back to Paul—was all the Home he’d ever need.

“Yeah," Paul whispered. "It does, doesn’t it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! I'm so sad to be leaving this world behind. I hope you've enjoyed lingering here as much as I have!! <3


End file.
